Saturday Morning, Bucolic Joshua, Texas

Saturday morning here in bucolic Joshua, Texas. Madeleina is on the couch behind me, watching Saturday morning shows and cartoons in here, my office, because the damned remote for the living room television isn't changing any channels anymore, despite having new lithium batteries. We're headed out to the chicken coop in a little while, to continue the work Madeleina and my friend Mike did, which is to put string across the high posts around the coop as a sort of string-roof that might keep the big, beautiful, chicken-eating red tailed hawks away. We're gonna try to make it a sort of spider web, so that even if a hawk gets in, he/she will have a tough time getting out. When Mike made it he used kite string. We're going with twine. And then we're gonna do what he did, which is put silver foil strips on the string to help confuse the birds. The hawks, I mean, as the chickens are already plenty confused without any help from us.
And then I'm gonna finish the second section of front porch fencing--jeez that job has been going on forever! and get that in place, leaving just one smallish section. Hopefully it will all be done tomorrow so that I can paint it this week after I do a good Chloroxing of the porch floor.
And then I'll put a story I'm working on to bed on Monday. And then I can start working on the cover stories I've lined up. Sweet!
This morning Chepa called from her boyfriend's in Indiana. She's missing being home, missing Madeleina, Marco, Italo, Sara and Taylor Rain. Well, down here we're missing Chepa's laughter but we're also missing Sierra and Alexa. I'm glad they're getting so much time with their dad, but at the same time, how much time is too much time? What about us? Specifically, what about me? I miss the heck out of those little girls. I miss them messing up the house, pulling dozens of books from the bookshelves to give me to read to them; I miss them asking "And what about the donuts, Mr. P Garman? Don't forget the donuts!"; and I miss them jumping on the trampoline, being afraid of goatguy and having me carry the both of them to the chicken coop to keep him away from them. I miss their laughter and how they play with Madeleina. I miss 'em a lot.
The trade off is that when Chepa and the girls are here I lose time with Madeleina when she's at Chepa's.
The lesson? If you can avoid it, don't do anything to help break your family into pieces, because, like Humpty-Dumpty, even if you can later make the best of it, it will never be whole again.